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Thank you to our Co-producer patron Kevin Wetter for selecting this week's topic!

This 2003 superhero film adaption went through ten screenwriters during its production and suffered poor critical reception. We look back before the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we now know it and ask why the formula of Greek tragedy mixed with Cold War paranoia failed to work.

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This HBO series remake about artificial intelligence, violence and consciousness was made with expert care by everyone involved in its production. But we ask, why then wasn't its depiction of its big themes ultimately satisfying?

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This 1996 novel is infamous for its length and complex narrative structure, while being critically lauded for its themes and style. We discuss how Wallace approached the project, while grappling with revelations about how he treated women both on-and-off the page.

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Thank you to our Co-Producer patron Miriam Meaney for selecting this week's topic!

This 2016 film by Nicolas Winding Refn is about beauty, jealousy and the entertainment industry. We look at Refn's thematic intentions and the myriad of arguments about his "misogyny" or "feminism," to try to understand how the glamour industry portrays women.

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This 2007 manga serial by Inio Asano seems like a simple story about a middle-school boy growing up in Japan. But we find that using symbolic simplicity together with the detailed, weird world of adults, Asano has been described as the voice of his generation.

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This 1992 album is celebrated as one of the best of the era but we look at the dysfunctional, toxic relationships between the five band members, and we find that the pressures of the music business, touring, and getting older, led to internal conflicts that made it harder for Faith No More to just be a group of goofy weirdos.

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This 1967 British TV show is revered as a cult classic that was radical and countercultural, while symbolizing philosophical arguments about individualism vs. collectivism. We take a deeper look at star Patrick McGoohan and the commercial interests behind the show to ask if it's ultimately more conservative than pop culture likes to remember.

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This 1979 collection of essays attempts to reveal the 1960s and California as stories without narratives. We discuss how Didion's work was branded because of her gender, class, and lack of politics, despite her insistence that writing was only an attempt to make sense out of chaos.

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This 2015 Indian romantic comedy uses a meta-narrative to deconstruct expectations about identity and everyday life. We question the assumptions writer/director Imtiaz Ali makes about gender roles, while wondering how much the real infidelity between the lead actors complicated the film's big theme.

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This 2012 experimental noise record was heralded as an important moment in musical evolution. We look at how the band approaches their process while unpacking their relationship with major label Epic Records. And we ask, how do noise, magick, and defecation contribute to the future of music?

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This collected comic is about a victim of child abuse, while also serving as an homage to the work of storyteller Beatrix Potter. We discuss Talbot's approach to representing such difficult subject matter, while also crafting a book that was more user friendly to non-comics readers.

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This HBO television show about a standup comedian going through divorce attempts to tackle three big themes: sex, religion and the importance of comedy. We look into Pete Holmes and Judd Apatow's motivations behind-the-scenes, while also asking, "What is its point of view beyond self absorption?"

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This 1996 novella is about the dark history of Chilé, merged with a detective story about poets. We look at Bolaño's career, while taking into account criticisms of his authenticity and his representation of Chileans from the vantage of his security in Europe.

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This 1957 Japanese samurai film is a postwar adaptation of Shakespeare's MacBeth, but we learned that it's also tapping into historical theatrical techniques and criticisms of nationalistic self-destruction. We turn to other writers and scholars for help unpacking these symbols we don't know much about, while learning just how universal this critically acclaimed movie actually is.

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This 2006 comic by Brian K. Vaughn and Niko Henrichon is about lions escaping the Baghdad Zoo during the Iraq War. We look at how the creators approached this subject matter, why it's been challenged in libraries and how it represents people in the Middle East.

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This 1996 comic-book-based-cartoon aired on MTV in 10-minute bursts of weirdness. We discuss its themes of tragedy and trauma, together with how it represents feminism, while still objectifying the female body.

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This book attempts to redefine the novel by combining narrative with an imagined anthropological record. We discuss Le Guin's background and mission, as well as larger questions about cultural misappropriation and utopianism.

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This 2009 psychological thriller pretends to be a found footage horror film, when it's actually a dramatic exploration of grief. We discuss writer/director Joel Anderson's process, as well as the funding, distribution and historical themes in the movie.

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It's our third annual Christmas ghost story episode and we're looking into this 2011 debut of the popular horror anthology series by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. We discuss Murphy's mission, the show's popularity and its contrast of trashy excessive violence and sex, with themes of mainstream, heteronormative patriarchy.

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This 3-disc debut by an accomplished saxophonist was universally acclaimed as a sea change in music. We discuss how Washington was influenced by friends, family, history and dreams, while trying to challenge his listeners with genre-defying sounds.

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This 12-part comic series seems like a fan's homage to Carl Bark' Disney stories, but we uncover how the values of "hard work" within (and the corporate machinations of many publishers) led Rosa to quit making comics out of frustration and resentment.

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This 1987 filmed monologue changed the way mainstream media considered autobiographical performance art. We discuss how Gray made the film with director Jonathan Demme and the emotional themes throughout that resonate after his suicide.

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This influential 1979 album combined art education with working class political activism to play with the meaning of pop music. We discuss the production of the record and the band's conflicts (or lack thereof) with their record label and the BBC.

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This horror comic by Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbairn purports to act symbolically like our archetypes of myth. We ask whether it's successful in getting into our subconscious and if cosmic horror and lack of meaning even scare us anymore.

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